one gets older: and I have been a bad Traveller all my life.
So I will promise nothing that I am not sure of doing. Only, if you
continue to desire this strongly, when next Summer comes, I will resolve
upon it if I can.

These Naseby Letters of yours--they are all yours I have preserved,
because (as in the case of Tennyson and Thackeray) I would not leave
anything of private personal history behind me, lest it should fall into
some unscrupulous hand. Even these Naseby letters--would you wish them
returned to you? Only in case you should desire this, trouble yourself
to answer me now.

_To W. F. Pollock_.

WOODBRIDGE, _Dec._ 24, [1871]

MY DEAR POLLOCK,

. . . The Pirate is, I know, not one of Scott's best: the Women, Minna,
Brenda, Norna, are poor theatrical figures. But Magnus and Jack Bunce
and Claud Halcro (though the latter rather wearisome) are substantial
enough: how wholesomely they swear! and no one ever thinks of blaming
Scott for it. There is a passage where the Company at Burgh Westra are
summoned by Magnus to go down to the Shore to see the Boats go off to the
Deep Sea fishing, and 'they followed his stately step to the Shore as the
Herd of Deer follows the leading Stag, with all manner of respectful
Observance.' This, coming in at the close of the preceding unaffected
Narrative is to me like Homer, whom Scott really resembles in the
simplicity and ease of his Story. This is far more poetical in my Eyes
than all the Effort of ---, ---, etc. And which of them has written such
a Lyric as 'Farewell to Northmaven'? I finished the Book with Sadness;
thinking I might never read it again. . . .

P.S. Can't you send me your Paper about the Novelists? As to which is
the best of all I can't say: that Richardson (with all his twaddle) is
better than Fielding, I am quite certain. There is nothing at all
comparable to Lovelace in all Fielding, whose Characters are common and
vulgar types; of Squires, Ostlers, Lady's maids, etc., very easily drawn.
I am equally sure that Miss Austen cannot be third, any more than first
or second: I think you were rather drawn away by a fashion when you put
her there: and really old Spedding seems to me to have been the Stag whom
so many followed in that fashion. She is capital as far as she goes: but
she never goes out of the Parlour; if but Magnus Troil, or Jack Bunce, or
even one of Fielding's Brutes, would but dash in upon the Gentility and
swear a round Oath or two